Hide and Seek in Cemeteries
by Kihin Ranno
Summary: When you’re a child, you don’t really understand death. Even when you lose someone when you’re young, you never really understand the permanence of death until you’re much older. I learned what death was when I was 14 and the man I loved died in my arms.


Hide and Seek in Cemeteries  
Written for the Sailor Moon Fic/Art Exchange on LiveJournal for circuitously  
by Kihin Ranno  
1/1

When you're a child, you don't really understand death. For awhile, it's something that happens to other people – or something that happens in anime your mother than has to carefully explain. Eventually, it does happen to you. You lose your grandparent or another distant relative – sometimes a friend of the family. You go to the funeral in the new dress your mother brought for you, meet cousins you won't see for another five years, and play hide-and-seek among the gravestones. But just attending the ceremony doesn't mean that you get it. They tell you grandpa's in heaven; they say your aunt's gone away to sleep for a long time. But even though you never see that grandpa or that aunt again (if you knew them at all), you never really understand the permanence of death until you're much older.

Take me for example. I learned what death was when I was fourteen and the man I loved died in my arms.

Then again, I suppose that's still young. I certainly felt like an old crone the next morning when I woke up and realized for the first time that I would never see Nephrite again. I would never hear his voice that warmed me like the wine I was allowed at Christmas. I would never smell his cologne that reminded me of a summer night on the oceanfront. I would never share a chocolate parfait with him. I would never hear him laugh a second time. I would never kiss him. Not ever.

I cried until I made myself sick, and with every tear, I felt myself aging. And every morning I woke up, I remembered, and I grew so much older and so much sadder.

But another thing you learn when you understand death is that while it lasts forever, grief has no such power. Eventually you reach the point where there are no more tears left and when the irrepressible sadness you have lived with is unbearable. And then one day you wake up and you don't have to remind yourself he's gone. Sometimes it's not even the first thing you think of. So you keep living on without him and you laugh and you eat and you shop and you do all the mundane things he'll never get to do, but you don't feel guilty any more. You can even allow yourself to fall in love with the nice boy, the nerdy boy, the boy who is nothing like the man, who will never be at risk the way he was, who will never leave you in such a sudden, bloody mess.

Still, even when I could hold my head up, even when his absence was not my first thought upon waking, a part of me wanted him back. For years after I lost him, I would send up a silent prayer to whatever god I thought might listen, and I'd ask for him to come back to me.

But eventually, even that stopped. I stopped praying, and I stopped believing in any god. But that was fine. I was happy. I was fulfilled. I wasn't alone. And so I was okay with him being gone. I was okay with his death.

It doesn't seem fair that I finally got what I wanted when I stopped asking for it.

-----

When I was younger and could be allowed such indulgences, I often dreamed of how this moment would play out. It was usually dramatic. My preferred scenario pitted me against whatever monster was currently attacking Tokyo, and rather than being saved from certain death by Sailor Moon or poor Tuxedo Umino, it would be him. He'd appear suddenly, moving just as I remembered – purposeful, swift, with a dangerous air. I'd cry, he'd hold me, and I would kiss him for the very first time.

Typically, the reality of the situation felt anticlimactic by comparison. I just rounded the corner, and there he was. His clothes were different, his hair was shorter, and he seemed less troubled by the demons we both knew so well and so differently. I knew him like I knew my own voice, but I had no idea what to say.

So I did the only natural thing: I stared until he did something.

Thankfully, he knew me right off, which saved us both from an embarrassing situation. I'd changed too of course – I was taller, my hair longer, and blonde now – but he knew me. I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrible romantic movies where high school sweethearts meet after ten years and they catch one another's eyes across a crowded bar. Too bad we didn't know each other in high school. It would have made everything so much easier.

"Naru," he said.

I'd heard my name a million times, but no one ever said it like he did. "I don't understand. How… are you here?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, as if conscious of the hair that no longer hung to his waist. "It's… complicated. Do you really want to know?"

It wasn't something I could have explained to anyone else, but the truth is, I really didn't. I didn't care how it happened. I just care that it happened.

"This doesn't seem real," I murmured. I lifted my hand to touch him, to be sure that he was solid and that I wasn't losing my mind, but I stopped.

Not that he cared. He reached for me. I couldn't hide my surprise that my fingers didn't feel so small in his hand either more. He pulled me forward and my fingertips brushed his cheek. Freshly shaven with a rough patch. I shivered.

"You died," I said, as if he could have forgotten.

"I'm sorry." His voice was softer, less assured than I remembered, but my skin still tingled at the sound. "I wish I could make this easier for you. I didn't mean to make you cry."

"I'm not crying," I said as the first tear ran down my cheek. "I… It's been ten years."

"I'm sorry."

I pulled my hand from his grasp and took a better look. I'd thought it was just the short hair, but there really was something different. He seemed… younger and diminished. Part of what attracted me to Nephrite in the first place was that he was forbidden. Not only older, but with a dark presence. That he turned out to be evil seemed almost inevitable. He was dangerous, and though I loved him, I was always a little afraid – not of him, but of what he could do.

He didn't scare me anymore.

"Usagi brought you back, didn't she?"

He blinked, and it was all the answer I need. I wanted to scream or be sick or start believing in God again just to hate Him. I opted to do nothing for fear of any of those possibilities.

"I didn't know you knew about… her."

"I haven't told her," I hissed with perhaps undeserved bitterness. "I've known for years – since the Black Moon. I thought it would be easier for her if I pretended I didn't know. I didn't want her to worry." I cleared my throat to keep it from closing completely. "But how could she not tell me _this_?"

"No! It's not… like that." He frowned, and I almost laughed at how wrong it looked. I've really only seen him moved to rage or sudden happiness. This level of distress was unfamiliar and absurd to me. "After the first… well, she made a wish for everyone to live a normal life. She didn't know I was included in the deal. Not until she saw me a week ago."

I pictured the face Usagi must have made when she saw him, and it almost made me feel better. "I bet she was surprised."

"I've never heard a human make that noise before."

I scoffed quietly, self-conscious in front of him unlike I'd been in years. I tucked my recently bleached hair behind my ears. "I suppose you have another name now."

"Yes. Hideki."

If I could claw a name from a person, I think I might have. It was so wrong for him. It felt too light and unimportant, too common. This was a man who saved me from monsters. This was a man who turned his back on his people for my sake. This was a man who died for me. It was not right that his name, his very essence, was something of so little consequence.

"That's different," I said diplomatically.

He smiled at me. I felt like singing. "You hate it."

"I admit to liking Nephrite better."

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. They were faded and well-worn, patched at the knee and frayed at the cuffs. I had to clench my fists to stop myself from slipping my fingers between his belt loops and pulling him toward me.

"It took me awhile to remember who she was, or… what I'd done." Her jerked suddenly, turning away from me and shutting those ice-blue eyes. "Sometimes I—"

"Shh." I reached again, and this time, I touched him. His face felt warm against my palm as I turned his face to mine. I ran my fingers through his hair and longed for how it used to be. I had dreamed so often of touching it after I lost my chance, and I hated that I'd been thwarted again.

"I don't blame you. It wasn't your fault."

He covered my hand with his, stretching his thumb to stroke the inside of my wrist. The impossible intimacy of this situation in the middle of the street struck me, and I was thankful I am no longer easily moved to blush. "It doesn't change what I did. I… used you. I took your energy. I possessed you for Christ's sake."

"I don't remember any of that," I insisted. "I know it happened, but when I think of you, it was never of that man." Another tear fell down my cheek, and if he had called me on it, I would not have denied that I cried. "I only remember that night. I remember you saving me, and I remember… losing you. I remember who you were at the moment you left. Nothing else mattered. Not ever."

He held my hand against his neck like a drowning man reaching for a savior. "You're so good. You were always so good, and I never deserved it."

"No. You always deserved it, Nephrite."

He kissed me then, and what could I do but let him? No one else would ever have this chance. I'm the only woman in the world who could ever round the corner and see her first love standing there, risen from the dead. I suppose this makes me lucky.

It was nothing like I thought it would be. After only ever kissing Umino, I admit, my imagination in this area was not expansive. Umino never kissed me like he was desperate. I never felt like an embrace was all that kept me from toppling over. Umino and I never kissed like it was penance for a mortal sin.

When we parted, I licked my lips to savor what he'd tasted like – lemons, alcohol, and broken promises. I rested my forehead against his chest. "I can't," I whispered while my body clung to him – an unwilling accomplice to my mind's better judgment.

"I know," he murmured in the voice I would have bathed in if I could have. "This isn't… It's not real. It's just memories."

"It's been ten years," I said again. "I… moved on. I stopped hoping for you to come back. I grew up."

I felt his lips press against my brow. "She told me it might be better if I didn't come. I wouldn't listen."

"I'm glad," I sobbed, choking on it. "I'm so glad."

I let him hold me for awhile longer. This was what I told myself to justify the way I clung to him. I held him until I thought it might kill me to stand there a minute longer. Then and only then did I look away.

"Did I ever thank you?" he asked. "For… saving me too?"

I try to remember and find I can't. "I don't know. And I don't know if I thanked you either."

He laughed, and for me, it was only the second time. "I guess we owe each other cards."

"I guess we do."

A few more banal pleasantries, and we turned away. Not as earth-shattering as I'd ever anticipated, but nothing anticipated ever is. I listened to his footsteps as he walked away, and with every step we took, I wondered if he was preserving me in his mind. I wondered if he'd remember the feel of my hair, the scent of my perfume, the way I kissed, the sound of my voice. I wondered if he'd treasure these things of mine as I would treasure everything he had given me of himself. I wondered if I was selfish to hoard him like this, and then I decided I didn't care.

I kept walking, and with each step, it grew more distant. It was no longer something happening to me, but something that had happened. I was a woman who had met her past, and I'd walked away. I was a woman with a future he could not give me. I was a woman who had already decided, and who could not change her mind.

I ran my thumb over the diamond around my left finger, and then walked home to my husband, to the second man I ever loved. I wiped my tears away and remembered I was lucky. I would no longer play hide-and-seek in cemeteries, looking for a lover who had no grave for me to find.


End file.
